The other diners had modestly retired into the angles of the room,
and left the distinguished pair in a certain isolation, but the
young clergyman was unrestrained by any sentiment of awe, and,
marching boldly up, took his place at the nearest table.
The conversation was, indeed, new to the student's ears. The ex-
Dictator of Paraguay stated many extraordinary experiences in
different quarters of the world; and the Prince supplied a
commentary which, to a man of thought, was even more interesting
than the events themselves. Two forms of experience were thus
brought together and laid before the young clergyman; and he did
not know which to admire the most - the desperate actor or the
skilled expert in life; the man who spoke boldly of his own deeds
and perils, or the man who seemed, like a god, to know all things
and to have suffered nothing. The manner of each aptly fitted with
his part in the discourse. The Dictator indulged in brutalities
alike of speech and gesture; his hand opened and shut and fell
roughly on the table; and his voice was loud and heavy. The
Prince, on the other hand, seemed the very type of urbane docility
and quiet; the least movement, the least inflection, had with him a
weightier significance than all the shouts and pantomime of his
companion; and if ever, as must frequently have been the case, he
described some experience personal to himself, it was so aptly
dissimulated as to pass unnoticed with the rest.
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